My guest blog for Girl Guides of Canada ‘Pretty Powerful Princesses’ (http://girlguidescanblog.ca/2011/03/04/princesses/)* went up today.  In the process of writing the post, two princess-related things came to mind that didn’t fit into the entry so I thought I’d share them here.

1) When The Boy was in kindergarten, I used to panic every time we were invited to a girl’s birthday party.  I wanted to get the little girl something she would like, but my gut wrenched at the idea of indulging the fluffy pink princess fantasies that all of the little girls in his class seemed to be wrapped up in.  I thought back to my own little girl self, and briefly entertained the idea of buying them spy kits and legos or a wonder woman costume like I would have liked.  I talked to Moms of little girls about what else their daughters might be into. Then I grudgingly reminded myself that the gifts were about what the birthday girl might like, not about what I thought they should have.

I roamed the aisles of the toy store like someone lost, fighting against my natural inclinations the whole way. Then it struck me: I could indulge them and me, I could buy them some princess crafty things, or a crown, and a copy of Robert Munsch’s Paperbag Princess. Or I could get them them a pink cape and a foam sword for protecting their castle.

I could make them happy and keep my ideals intact. There’s nothing wrong with being a princess, as long as being pretty and pink isn’t your only goal. If you can be a ‘princess AND’ instead of a ‘princess only’ then you can really get stuff done. It was a good compromise.

2) A few years ago, I was driving Jan and a friend of hers somewhere and the boys were along for the ride.  Jan’s friend was trying to impress us and he was weaving a story for the kids about a prince and a dragon.  To really take things up a notch he was adding in details of things he saw along the way, so the prince was travelling past a local coffee shop and the dragon was named after another store.  When the prince began searching for the beautiful princess, Jan and I quickly glanced at each other and we both said ‘Not me.’

Clearly, if you know us, you know that neither one of us are princesses. In fact, we both wanted to be the evil queen in the story.  Better to be evil and powerful than be bargaining with life based on your looks.

***************

End of stories, beginning of think-y bits.

But, here’s the thing.  I think it’s okay for little girls to want to play princess**. BUT and this is a huge but, I think you need to help them contextualize the whole princess thing.  Don’t let them away with ‘pretty’ as their only asset. Encourage them to be a Princess AND…(a doctor, a warrior, a chef, the boss of the world) instead of a princess only.  This could be your chance to teach them about personal power, ask them what good things the princess is doing in her world. Ask them why Princesses are cool***.

Let’s not forget that pink can be a power colour – it’s all in how we let it play out

*Something wonky is going on and I can’t create a link, let’s run with copying and pasting, hey? Sorry!

**Yes, yes, I know. It’s a complicated thing to tease out what kids actually want to do versus what marketers and gender norms tell them they want to do, and when it is your individual kid you can’t spend all your time going on about gender or they’ll tune you out.

***Maybe you can even g.et them thinking about She-Ra, Princess of Power or Xena, Warrior Princess.  Not perfect role models, but somewhere to start. 🙂

At the moment I have several green stripes in my hair, my toenails are painted green, and so are both my thumbnails.

If I had been nervous about my test last night, these things would have been charms  to help me do my pattern right, but since I had prepared adequately for a change, I was wearing the green as a celebration, as a badge of confidence.

But when I first planned on my green hair and nails, it struck me that I do little rituals, carry ‘charms’ and call on the universe* for help in a somewhat superstitious way on a fairly regular basis** and I began to wonder why.  It’s not an OCD thing (my crazy doesn’t manifest that way, usually), and I can do these things without the charms and rituals so it’s curious but not worrisome.   I don’t believe in the Law of Attraction*** so I’m not really thinking that I conjure up success with these things, but they do help me on some level.

The key to figuring it all out came when I reread an email from Marianne Elliot of the 30 Days of Yoga program I’m doing. In her note, she mentioned certain ritual type things you can do (burning incense, lighting candles, playing music) to put you in the right frame of mind for your yoga practice.   The email made me think about my charms and the like, and made me realize that the objects and rituals are part of my preparation.  They’re anchors holding me in the mental space I need for the activity at hand.

Lighting the candle in my ‘create’ candle holder puts me in a good space for writing,  painting my thumbnail green would help me focus on my punches and blocks instead of any nervousness, calling on the universe reminds me that I need to ask for help, or that I need to let go of my need to control, just lean into whatever is going on and trust that it will work out.****

So, my charms and rituals are a way of creating a space for the task, and pulling my concentration back to that task when needed, a way to remind myself about something important.

Now I feel a little less silly about my approach.  Creating space to accomplish things is vital, and I should use any tools I have in order to do that.

Do you have rituals, charms or potions to help you with challenges? Does my use of these things still seem superstitious to you? Do you use prayer to help you with challenges instead? How do you view prayer in that context?

*I don’t practice any organized religion, but I believe there is power in the universe above and beyond individual human power. That may jibe with your feelings about God, do with it what you will.
**And I am passing it on to my kids too.  I have a little leather bag full of courage/luck charms that they wear when they are feeling nervous, I draw a red dot on their fingers so they can ‘focus like a laser’ when they are having trouble settling, and I recently told The Boy that caffeine gave you extra math abilities so I gave him a shot glass of pepsi before bed so he could be ready for his math test in the morning.  I ‘fessed up afterwards on that last one, though.
***I was on board for the positive stuff, in the sense that once you tune in to something, you notice more examples of it (like when you buy a red hat and suddenly the world is full of red hats) so you can take advantage of opportunities that come your way.  I couldn’t get on board for the negative though, I can’t buy that rape victims vibrated on a frequency that brought on their attack, and I refuse to blame genocide on the victims either.  Glerg.
****So the dots on my kids’ fingers reminds them to focus, anchoring them in the task at hand. Their little bag of courage lets them draw on their own courage without having to ‘find’ it.

I got my green belt today (YAY!) and I wasn’t even a bit scared.  So I have officially checked one goal off my 2011 list – the fearless belt test.

The nature of the test helped. It was broken up in two parts, was held at our usual practice spot and I was tested by the easier of the two testers.  But while that made it less intense,  it was me controlling my preparation that made the difference.  I knew my shit, I couldn’t be shaken on that , so no matter how hard the test I would have been okay.

It makes me wonder how often my feelings of fear are actually telling me that I haven’t prepared adequately.

One of the problems with being able to think quickly on my feet is that I’ve learned I can get away with minimal planning  when I’m the only person really affected.   But ‘getting away’ with minimal planning/preparation is not the same as succeeding and it means I’m not really trying that hard*, even when things are important to me.  And I’m causing myself unnecessary stress because I have time to prepare these things, I just don’t.

It’s another example of how my fixed mindset ** holds me back.  Like the kids that Carol Dweck studied in her Mindset book I somehow think that having to prepare means I don’ t know my stuff.  It’s an endless loop of foolishness – how am I supposed to know something I haven’t learned or haven’t studied?  – but I get stuck in it all the same, subconsciously preventing myself from getting ahead because I don’t want to seem like I have to work at it.  The most annoying part is that it is me I’m most trying to impress, I’m not even trying to look ‘smart’ for other people – although that would be my preference, of course, if I seemed awesome and effortless to everyone else too.

So this fearless belt test has become about more than facing the nervousness that comes before a test of skill. It turned out to be about learning that fear can equal an acknowledgement of the need to prepare, and learning that actually doing the preparation leads to real confidence.  That confidence, of course, leads to increasing my chances of success.

In my last post, I said I needed to make time to do the work for my goals, and this is clearly part and parcel of that.  Even if the job ahead is just a task, not part of a larger goal, I need to make the time to prepare.  And I need to do that while keeping a growth mindset.   I feel like a lot of pieces are coming together for me right now.  This should be interesting.

Do you have a growth mindset or a fixed one?    Is my (now-former) ‘don’t try too hard and failure isn’t real’ approach familiar to you? Is your fear related to a lack of preparation? How much preparation time do you give yourself for something important? Got any ideas about how I can avoid getting stuck in a fixed mindset next time?

* I think for me, this is a way to avoid self-criticism, because if I fail when I’m not trying that hard, it’s because of lack of effort not a ‘real’ failure.  Not a logical train of thought, but a track I seem to end up on.  I’m workin’ on it. (see what I did there?)

**My natural state – I’m developing a growth mindset but it takes conscious thought, at least so far.